Cybercriminal Sentenced to 36 Months for Botched Government Hacking Scheme

Cybercrimes are becoming increasingly complicated, and solving them even more so. in fact, the vast majority of cybercrimes go unsolved and unpunished. However, there’s one man who has managed to thwart himself so thoroughly that there’s no way he couldn’t have gotten caught.

Yesterday, a Brooklyn court sentenced Dwayne C. Hans to 36 months imprisonment. He was also ordered to pay $134,000 in restitution for arranging a series of frauds between July 2015 and 2016.

“Hans has been held accountable for engaging in brazen fraud schemes intended to steal millions of dollars by using U.S. government websites,” United States Attorney Richard P. Donoghue said.

Here’s the story.

A Fool and His Money…

Hans was initially arrested in October of 2017 when he was first charged with suspicion of computer fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering.

Months prior, Hans had managed to gain unauthorized access to the United States General Service Administration’s Systems for Awards Management (also known as ‘SAM.’) Vendors who hold contracts with the US government can enter their bank account details into SAM to get paid.

Hans manipulated one of the accounts so that the government sent money intended for the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) directly into a bank account controlled by himself.

However, Hans’ clumsy paper trail led authorities straight to his door before he managed to see a nickel of the illicit funds. He didn’t even bother to mask his IP address before hacking into SAM; his home address was easily traceable.

Also, according to court documents at the time of the charge, “the user information that was provided as part of the process to access the SAM.gov website without authorization was associated on SAM.gov with the email address ‘dwayne.hansjr@outlook.com.”

Hans also attached his full name to five separate bank accounts he created to launder the money he was hoping to steal.

The defendant will have the next 36 months to think over his attempted crimes, which may even be enough time to come up with a better plan. Hopefully, however, Hans will take ‘professional cybercriminal’ off of his business cards and consider another career choice.